Book Talk: Rude Citizenship

Professor Larisa Kingston Mann (also known as Dj Ripley of Dutty Artz/Heavy NYC) discusses her new book Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power.

In this deep dive into the Jamaican music world filled with the voices of creators, producers, and consumers, Larisa Kingston Mann—DJ, media law expert, and ethnographer—identifies how a culture of collaboration lies at the heart of Jamaican creative practices and legal personhood. In street dances, recording sessions, and global genres such as the riddim, notions of originality include reliance on shared knowledge and authorship as an interactive practice. In this context, musicians, music producers, and audiences are often resistant to conventional copyright practices. And this resistance, Mann shows, goes beyond cultural concerns.